The AMD X570 Motherboard Overview: Over 35+ Motherboards Analyzed
by Gavin Bonshor on July 9, 2019 8:00 AM ESTASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3
Well-known in recent times for its impressive mini-ITX motherboard, the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3 includes a very solid feature set. The ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3 joins a small handful of small form factor X570 models at launch but looks to stand-out from the crowd with a major feature; a Thunderbolt 3 Type-C connector on the rear panel.
Following in line with the rest of its premium X570 product stack, ASRock has equipped the board with a hefty looking 10-phase power delivery, and official support for DDR4-4533 memory across two available slots with a total capacity of up to 64 GB. A single full-length PCIe 4.0 x16 slot is located at the bottom of the board, with a single PCIe 4.0 x4 M.2 slot, and just four SATA ports. The networking is handled by an Intel Gigabit LAN port, while the Wi-Fi 6 802.11ax wireless interface is controlled by the Killer AX1650 interface with support for BT 5 devices.
On the rear panel alongside the single Thunderbolt 3 Type-C connector which is the highlight of the board, the ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3 also includes two USB 3.1 G2 Type-A and two USB 3.1 G1 Type-A ports. This is contradictive on the official specifications that were given to us at Computex which stated this model has two USB 3.1 G2 Type-A ports on the rear, as well as two USB 2.0 ports which also seem to be missing from the rear panel. On the display model at Computex, there is a clear CMOS button, a DisplayPort input and HDMI video output, with a PS/2 combo port, and five 3.5 mm color coded audio jacks with a S/PDIF optical output due to the use of a Realtek ALC1220 HD audio codec.
The ASRock X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3 mini-ITX motherboard looks to stand out from other brands mini-ITX offerings with the Thunderbolt 3 which has been a mainstay of its desktop-focused small form factor models of recent times. A solid looking 10-phase power delivery similar to that of the ASRock Z390 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ac model we reviewed makes this even more appealing to users looking to push out the overclocks on the new Ryzen 3000 series processors. The X570 Phantom Gaming-ITX TB3 has an MSRP of $300, which is by no means cheap in comparison to its other mini-ITX models of late.
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sorten - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
Good advice, and you get lower system power consumption as a bonus. The main reason to go with the more expensive x570 boards is PCIE 4.0, and you're not going to get that if you switch to Intel.Ratman6161 - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
Asrock has the x570 pro 4 listed on their web site with an MSRP of $154.00 I've used their Pro X boards in a number of builds and always had good results with them. They don't seem to be available at retail yet (at least anywhere I've seen) . On the other hand, I'm not one of those to go out and buy any product on the first day. Street prices on both motherboards and CPU's are likely to drop quickly and...even if I go out and buy a new CPU, I don't have anything else that could take advantage of the x570 chipset for the time being, so my x470 is probably good to go for quite some time to come anyway.Gastec - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
Ryzen 3000 series CPU prices are going to be over MSRP for at least 3 months.Targon - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
I don't know where you live, but here in the USA, the CPUs are all at the official prices, unless you go to a third party seller who is trying to scam money out of people. Note that many online stores show products from third parties in addition to what they sell themselves, so when you see CPU prices above MSRP, those are the third party scammers.Newegg is getting daily deliveries by the look of it, and I expect the other large online sources are as well. The sales volumes are high on these chips, and some people just take advantage of it and charge more money.
Gastec - Saturday, July 13, 2019 - link
On Amazon.es and PCComponentes.com the EXACT SAME price, set up by bots:AMD Ryzen 9 3900X, 548,90€
AMD Ryzen 7 3700X: 361,80 €
eva02langley - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
The only reason to buy x570 is for PCIe 4.0. If you don't need it, get a B450 board at 75$ Will work for every Ryzen 3000 CPUs.I am even thinking about using my X370 MSI Gaming Pro Carbon for my 3950x.
abufrejoval - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
Unless you happen to have an older Ryzen or Carrizo lying around, there could be a problem to get older boards with an up-to-date BIOS.Had similar issues a year ago when RAM was so expensive, I had to recycle DDR3 for Kaby Lake CPUs using Z170 motherboards that only has Skylake support. Sandy Bridge, Ivy Bridge and Haswell CPUs I had galore, but Skylake only as notebooks. I wound up buying a Sky Lake i3, which I then returned for a full refund after I had updated the motherboards.
Didn't feel good about it, wasn't given a choice either.
These days some dealers offer a BIOS upgrade service, but at €40 it pretty much eats the 3. + 4. generation benefit.
I want 10Gbase-T or rather NBase-T. Currently that means mostly Aquantia 107, of which I have 4 already. Those are €88 a piece, but when I look at these x570 prices, they charge a 300% premium for what's essentially a low-cost chip.
And then I hear rumors, that there is actually 10Gbit Ethernet or in fact 100Gbit Ethernet already on-die, both in the CPU chiplet and the x570 chipset variant: For IF Ethernet is simply another protocol to run on the fabric and all you need is PHY.
It is rather unfortunate that sane CPU prices, sane SSDs and sane RAM only mean that motherboard vendors are hoping to cash in big-time.
I can see how they would be hungry. But I don't have 'waste money' around to feed them.
The_Assimilator - Wednesday, July 10, 2019 - link
Asus boards have a "BIOS flashback" feature whereby if you plug in a flash drive with a new BIOS to a specific USB port and press a button on the IO panel, the board will auto-flash itself with that BIOS - no CPU is needed, just power to the board.Targon - Thursday, July 11, 2019 - link
Almost all MSI motherboards have BIOS flashback, and the Asus ROG Crosshair series also has BIOS flashback where you don't need a CPU or RAM in order to flash the BIOS. Most Asus motherboards do NOT have BIOS flashback capability.DanNeely - Tuesday, July 9, 2019 - link
when they get PCI4 support Intel's boards will be equally more expensive than the previous generation. Maintaining that high frequency a signal across more than a cm or 2 requires building boards to a much higher and more expensive standard or active signal booster chips along the path.PCIe 5 will be far worse on that front. Estimates I saw earlier this year were that PCIe4 would add as much as $100 to the price of a board; with the cheapest x570 boards being almost $100 more than the cheapest x470's on Newegg and the average (excluding the crazy halo ones) looking like it's at least $50 higher that doesn't seem too far off. That article (ee times asia???) was predicting that PCIe5 could end up adding as much as $400 above the cost of a 3.0 capable board; which if true probably means it will end up server only or with only a narrow strip between the CPU and chipset build up to that standard. (Assuming the latter possible anyway: If the cost challenge is more preventing external interference than in needing higher quality materials a local board segment fudge might not be feasible.)